Just three days before the 1993 Super Bowl game, a news conference was called in Pasadena. There Sheila Kuehl, an attorney for the California Women's Law Center, stepped to the podium to report some shocking news: according to a study by Old Dominion University, emergency room admissions of women rose by 40% following football games won by the Washington Redskins.

Media representatives got the warning that Super Bowl Sunday is "the biggest day of the year for violence against women." Soon a media advisory went out warning women, "Don't remain at home with him during the game."

The next morning, Friday January 29, psychologist Lenore Walker appeared on Good Morning America and repeated the same frightening news.

By Saturday, the hysteria had reached a fever pitch. A January 30 Boston Globe article claimed that women's shelter and hotlines are "flooded with more calls from victims than on any other day of the year."

Just before the coin flip for the big game, NBC ran a 30-second spot reminding men that domestic violence is a crime.

Then the Washington Post decided to do a little detective work. Post reporter Ken Ringle called Janet Katz, one of the researchers from Old Dominion University, to verify the claim. "That's not what we found at all," Katz responded. To the contrary, she said any increase in emergency room admissions "was not associated with the occurrence of football games in general."

Ringle's report, "Wife Beating Claims," appeared on the front page of the Washington Post on January 31. This was the upshot of the story: the assertion that watching football games provokes men into a frenzy of wife-beating was actually a hoax.

Within hours, Lenore Walker and the Boston Globe reporter pulled back on their original claims, admitting they hadn't seen the original study. On February 2, the Boston Globe ran a retraction.

UPDATE - that "40% increase" figure, such a feature of the Superbowl fantasy, seems to have taken on the same life of its own as the UK's "one in four" figure (repeated endlessly; based on a dodgy 1993 survey of North London in which "Mooney's definition of violence includes physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse - and each of these categories involves a whole spectrum of behaviour. So under psychological abuse we find 'criticism... jealousy...destroying possessions...and verbal abuse', and - most dramatically of all - 'being forced to do menial and trivial tasks'". Criticism as domestic violence, eh ? Has Ms Mooney ever been in a relationship ? Menial tasks ? I know who cleans the toilets in this house. I digress).

Here are Staffordshire Police, clamping down on domestic violence for Euro 2004.

"Staffordshire Police say they will clamp down on domestic violence fuelled by the Euro 2004 football tournament. The Pathway Project, the county's only 24-hour helpline for domestic violence victims, reported a surge in calls of almost 40% during the 2002 World Cup."

Note the BBC's use of the "one in four" statistic, on a photo helpfully captioned (move the cursor over it) "Photo staged by actors. Shows: man pushing woman".

Alas the project doesn't seem to have worked. Here's the BBCs 2006 story.

"Violent abusers are to be under extra police scrutiny during the World Cup by a Midlands force. Staffordshire officers are predicting a rise in domestic violence, especially around England's matches, and they will be targeting known offenders.

Posters with the slogan "Now we're into injury time" will promote the campaign.

Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport said during Euro 2004 there had been a 40% increase in cases of domestic violence."

People - especially English people - worry about nationalism. They think it must necessarily involve hating everyone who's not like you. English liberals don't even mind that - as long as "everyone who's not like you" is code for "English", hence the left's love affair with Sinn Fein/IRA over the last forty years. I can remember a time (admittedly it was in student politics) when supporting the right of the oppressed Nationalist people of Ireland to defend themselves against British imperialism "by any means necessary" was pretty much a touchstone of whether you were 'really' on the left at all. After all, if the IRA considered it a necessary defence to slaughter thirty-odd innocent people in Birmingham and maim hundreds more, who were we to judge on their behalf ?

But I don't think I've ever met a Nationalist who doesn't like his own people. Even Billy "England" Bragg might find this speech a tad over the top.

"Presiding officer Lord Elis-Thomas has spoken of his anguish at the lack of ethnic minority representation in the National Assembly.

In an exclusive interview with the Western Mail, he said it was essential all communities of Wales are represented.

He said, "When I sit in my chair in our new debating chamber, I am ashamed when I look out and see before me a sea of white faces."

Well, yes. They're called the Welsh.

Elis needs to take a look at the statistics. There aren't many black people in Wales, but there are plenty of non-Welsh minorities - the largest (and fastest growing) minority being also hideously white - the English white-flighters who are currently destroying what's left of Welsh Wales. This process - and the factors driving it - seems to have passed our soi-disant 'nationalist' by.

And next time I hear someone say:- "He'll come out of prison one day - it's us that are serving a life sentence", I shall throw up. - The Magistrate's Blog.

"I'm not happy with the sentence, the realistic sentence. He got what I see as a short sentence but Hayley has got a life sentence - his face is always going to be there." - emotional claptrap from the new partner of Hayley Cooper.

A man who stabbed a woman nearly 30 times has been sentenced to life in prison by a court. Mark Antony Oldfield, 32, from Devizes, Wiltshire, knifed ex-girlfriend Hayley Cooper 28 times, near Salisbury, on 14 September last year.

Salisbury Crown Court heard how Miss Cooper, 23, had to undergo life-saving surgery after the attack.

The sentence passed means Oldfield is subject to lifetime parole but he could be out of jail in as little as two years, the court heard.

The judge reduced Oldfield's actual jail term from nine years to six to give credit for his guilty plea.

Oldfield, who has a string of past violent convictions, will serve half of the six years inside, minus the 269 days he has already served on remand, after which he can apply for release on parole.

Oldfield is 32 - an age at which through most of recorded history a man has been considered an adult. Take a look at him. Alternative or what ?

The great glory of the welfare state and the sexual revolution is that adolescence for males has been extended from its ancient bounds of 15-20 to something like 13-40 - indeed for some beyond that. In ancient days (the Golden Age that never was) the disciplines of work and marriage subdued man's natural tendencies to naughtiness of all kinds. No work meant no food - and perhaps more important for socialisation, no respect from your peers. It also meant no marriage - and no marriage meant no sex - unless you were wealthy, lucky or unusually desirable.

Now in many parts of the UK respect is measured in mohs - the harder the better. Reliable contraception has removed the link between sex and childbearing - and if a pregnancy results and the child hasn't a club foot, Daddy State will raise the child - to the great approval of Polly Toynbee, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the children's charities and all right-thinking people. No need for a hubby to work for his family - Sure Start and Gordon Brown can do a much better job.

In the meantime, men are free to express their inner creativity - as Mark Oldfield did. Bounds ? Of course we know no bounds.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

About "Asian values" and the collapse of the white working class. If a Tory MP said this he'd be accused of 'demonising the poor' :

"Frenchwood, on the southern tip of the town (Preston) centre, was a Muslim area when I left it, but it is even more so today. It has grown both in terms of population and geography. Most of the friends and acquaintances I had left behind are still in Frenchwood. Many are busy snapping up the few properties that appear on the market so they can pass them on to their children. The neighbourhood itself has improved. Doses of regeneration finance and the self-help business ethic of the mainly Indian Muslim community has lifted the areas economically and socially. It's not exactly Harrogate but it is clean, safe, and contains all the amenities needed for a modern sustainable community.

For Muslims it's a far more desirable place to live than the white working class estates that ring town, where house prices are lower, fire engines attending emergencies are routinely stoned, and dependency culture is passed down from one dysfunctional one-parent family to the next. Although these residents are my socio-economic counterparts I don't have enough in common with them to embark on the shared enterprise that is building a community."

About community :

"Communities are organic entities, built around the magnetic pole of common values and interests. If there's one thing that history, particularly the failure of communism, has taught us it is that the expression of these values cannot be suppressed or engineered out of existence. Just as the early industrial era, characterised by low geographical mobility and a shift away from agrarian modes of production, produced communities centred on the workplace, the shape of today's communities is driven by a new range of imperatives, such as good schooling, transport links, and low levels of crime.

In the case of Britain's Muslims, major criteria are also the presence of an extended family, local mosque, and other co-religionists amongst whom they can express and nurture their identity without all the problems associated with being perceived as outsiders.

Without a doubt white flight facilitated Muslim community building in the areas they moved into. But they also took on a desirability for Muslims, which exacerbated the process of segregation. Manningham and Sparkbrook could not have remained Muslim-majority areas without the active participation of the people who live there. Despite the onset of a second and third generation the character of these areas has changed little. Knowing why allows us to understand why Cantle's social cohesion project was always doomed to failure."

"A new divide is developing in Britain’s housing market as house price increases in the West of the country outstrip those in the East. The “West-East tilt” now rivals the North-South divide as the defining character in the country’s booming housing market.

More than two million people have moved away from London in the past ten years, whether to escape the frantic lifestyle or simply from a desire to retire to the countryside. And the West Country is proving to be one of the most popular destinations.

Eighteen of the 20 counties that have had the biggest increases in property prices since 1996 are in western Britain, according to figures from the Halifax, the country’s biggest mortgage lender."

Which areas had the highest price rises ? Wales and the south west. Take another look at that graphic.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Josephine Rooney, who was commended for her community work by the council in March to mark International Women's Day, faces three months in prison after refusing to pay her council tax in protest at the state of her street. She stopped payments to Derby City Council in December 2004 and owes nearly £800 but she insists she will not pay up.

Miss Rooney, who is angry at the anti-social behaviour and litter in her area, said she has been campaigning for six years to put a stop to drug-taking and fly-tipping in Hartington Street, where she has lived for 20 years.

"Nowadays Hartington Street in Normanton is known as Smack Alley, but it was still prosperous and middle-class when Josephine moved here 20 years ago, a parade of grand three storey terraces just a few blocks away from the centre of Derby.

Then a "halfway house" hostel for homeless people and addicts on rehab opened at one end of the street, and one by one the old residents moved out. In 10 years, the street's decline has been so rapid that out of 50 houses, only eight are now owner-occupied, the rest have been bought up by absent landlords and converted into cramped bedsits and flats. The last family left more than a year ago. "It became too dangerous, as simple as that," said Josephine. "

"It was revealed today that the fighting broke out around Hawthorne Road in Deane on Saturday after a woman was racially abused by a gang of white teenagers.

Up to 60 men and boys then took to the streets armed with clubs, bats and swords leaving residents who witnessed the fighting terrified."

Families feared for their safety as gangs of white and Asian youths fought a running battle outside their Bolton homes.

Up to 60 youths carrying iron bars, clubs and even a sword were believed to have been involved in the brawl in Hawthorne Road, Deane, on Saturday night.

One woman, who asked not to be named, gave first aid to a white man who had been injured.

She said: "I rang the police and told them to get an ambulance here.

"The man was badly beaten, and was bleeding. I tried to help but was forced go back inside because paving stones were being thrown in the street.

"It was really frightening. Nothing like this has ever happened here before.

"People were too scared to leave their homes. One woman was trying to get a message to her children, who were out, not to come back to the street."

These kind of reports need to be decoded nowadays, rather like the Lidget Green disturbances. An educated guess might be : White lowlife abuse Asian woman. Asian gangs come onto streets. Whether what followed was a 'battle' or, as in Lidget Green, a series of attacks on anyone with the wrong colour skin, remains to be seen.

"The deserts of the world are threatened by a combination of human exploitation and climate change that could, within decades, wipe out many unique habitats and rare species, an authoritative study has found."

Never mind. Like the family, the deserts aren't being destroyed - just changing.

I've posted before on young people carrying blades. In my youth a large minority of boys over primary school age carried blades. Every toyshop sold them, every newsagents had a "Richards of Sheffield" display of knives on a large card in the window. The difference is we weren't carrying them for the reasons they're carried now.

So there's a big (and not unmerited) flap about blades at the moment.

The kids are next door watching 'the X-factor'. Cheery Bath rugby chappie Matt Stevens is wowing them. His stage persona is remarkably like that of George Melly. What's he singing again ?

"Just a jack knife has Macheath dear,And he keeps it out of sight.

When that shark bites with his teeth, dear,Scarlet billows begin to spread,Fancy gloves though has Macheath dear,So there's never, never a trace of red.

On the sidewalk, one Sunday morning,Lies a body, oozin' life,Someone's sneaking 'round the corner,Could that someone be Mack the Knife."

Sunday, June 04, 2006

"A school has changed the names of its primary one classes after complaints that they left some children feeling inferior, BBC Scotland has learned. Bonnyrigg Primary School had called its classes 1a and 1b but some parents of children in 1b said it left the youngsters feeling second best."

And now it looks as if the Home Office is handing out residency at £4,000 a pop. Cheap compared to a peerage.

"Officers are currently conducting around 50 'live investigations' relating to corruption allegations involving Home Office staff, a proportion of which involve asylum applicants buying residency status to remain in Britain. So far this year alone, six IND staff have been dismissed for giving applicants 'leave to remain' status in the UK without being able to justify their decision to investigating officers."

Remember the old days, when white people traditionally attacked black people ? The Observer does, but says that this no longer reflects reality.

" ... stories about violence in school come as no surprise to Modqtar and Mustafa, nor to their Asian counterparts. Their school lives have been punctuated with fights and aggression, some involving knives, many more without. Often gang clashes are sparked by unfounded rumours. One 'riot' began because of a whisper that a Somali boy had beaten up an Asian girl.

This is not just indiscriminate violence between frustrated youth. It is a new form of vicious racism that breaks down the traditional notion of white on black violence. Now there is hate and distrust between ethnic groups: white, Asian, Afro-Caribbean, African and those from the Middle East."

But surely, we're a nation of immigrants, so this can be nothing new. I'm sure there was friction between the Huguenot and Flemish communities.

"Comments once associated with far-right white groups can now be heard among the long-established immigrant communities."

But the Huguenots said bad things about the Irish when they came over. And the Irish said bad things about the Jews.

"Rob Beckley, the spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers on police and faith community issues, said that a form of inter-ethnic violence had developed, with newly arrived immigrants the most targeted and most vulnerable.

'There is at least one incident a week of serious disturbances based around schools among groups, sometimes inter-ethnic, sometimes gangs. It is an issue significant enough to merit substantial police intervention on occasion.'"

This is just moral panic. If you look at a typical Victorian school you'd see there were frequent stabbings and gang fights.

"Beckley, also assistant chief constable of Hertfordshire, said that some school-based gangs were adopting an aggressive stance based on religious and cultural identities."

So ? It's always been that way. I remember at primary school that the C of E kids couldn't walk past St Peter's Catholic Primary without being ambushed by the Junior Warriors of Christ The King, whose punches and kicks would be punctuated by cries of 'that's for St Wulstan !' or 'you martyred John Wall !'.

I don't know what the Observer's up to with this sensationalist reporting, which has a distinctly tabloid feel to it. The problem with such reports are that a reader might conclude from this that multiculturalism isn't working that well. And that would be ridiculous.

We spent a weekend there a couple of years ago, and before we left I looked around the shops for a souvenir.

I was looking for a small portrait of Alviso Mocenigo I, the Venetian ruler whose fleet of over 100 galleys formed the nucleus of the Christian forces which defeated the infidel at Lepanto, in the last great battle of oared vessels.

At last I spotted one in an art shop window - a print of Andrea Vicentino's "King Henri III (1551-89) of France visiting Venice in 1574, escorted by Alvise Mocenigo I"

As I entered the shop another customer came in, and reached the counter before me.